About ten minutes later, Lilea, Maddy, and I were on the shuttle. The preflight checks finished and off we went.
“So, what’s the plan?” Lilea asked from the cabin.
“Find the bastard’s downed ship,” Maddy replied. “Kill them to saveour crew—”
“Stunning is quieter,” I interjected. “As much as I want them dead, Corporate will be less stingy about the report if we have pirates for them to… interview.”
And by interview, I meant torture because it was technically illegal, but I wouldn’t put it past them.
“Okay, we could kill one or two and stun the rest.”
I rolled my eyes.
“But how will we go about that?” asked Lilea.
“Galya reconfigured one of the fancy scanners to search for radiation leaks. Even if they patched the damage by now, there will be residue. We still need to be within ten clicks of them, but they shouldn’t have gotten far from the attack site, so we’re going to expand our search from there,” I explained, earning a quick glance from Maddy.
With her visor darkened, I couldn’t see whether or not she was impressed.
“Once we find their ship, I'll land the shuttle and we'll depart as a single group. They know we’re out here and will be on the lookout for us, so no going off alone. We need to take out their sentries quickly and silently, too. If their engines are anywhere near prepared, they can leave without notice. They may even risk going off-planet, and one spark will detonate them. Keep your blasters on stun and tie the bastards up before we head out. Once we’re on the shuttle, I will handle the pilot, and the two of you will deal with the rest.”
Lilea giggled. “Got it,Captain.”
“Shut up,” I grumbled.
“Where are you in the command chain, by the way?” asked Maddy and I chose not to answer.
“Bottom,” Lilea replied. “He has always been considered too unruly for any commanding duties.”
“Sounds about right.”
I gave them both the finger.
041
Welocatedtheshipabout thirty clicks from the attack site. No doubt they had a better scanner, better everything. However, we didn’t want to spend half the day trekking through the flora. We risked landing at twenty clicks, where we took to stalking through the flora.
“They won’t have the pilot patrolling, or the injured one, but the engineer could be inside or out. If they're smart, they would stun our crew, so there may be one watching them or they are taking up sentry duty,” I said.
“They wouldn’t go too far from the ship either. Pirates aren’t the self-sacrificing type. Even the tightest-knit crews will leave someone behind,” said Lilea. Her crew had been on the docks when she was snatched. There were more of them than the militia, but they left her to her fate.
While Lilea watched our backs, I took the front, and Maddy stayed at our center. Her moves may be rusty, but she knew what she was doing and what we were up against.
Lilea had been right about the pirates, too. They were near the ship. No one would take off without them. The first sentry kept themselvesalong the southern perimeter. Another took to the northwest, and the final one to the northeast. A patchwork job had been done to the engines. Scraps of metal crisscrossed over the damage, a makeshift bandage that could get them to the nearest dock, which meant they were close to takeoff.
Three sentries and three of us. Signaling to Lilea and Maddy, they took to either side while I waited in the brush. The constant up and down of my pulse became a beacon furthering my focus. The commlink clicked. Lilea was in position. A moment later, Maddy mirrored her. I took a breath, gave the signal, and we fired twice for good measure. The bodies dropped.
We tied them up, and hurried to the open cargo bay door, where the engineer spotted us. They hit the door release before we got a shot off.
“Move!” I urged, bolting toward the raising dock. Lilea and Maddy weren’t far behind.
I jumped onto the door first, blaster firing at the engineer, who had taken to hiding behind a cargo crate. The vessel was triple the size of our shuttle, meant for living and long travels, which meant more places to hide, and potentially more pirates. At the front, a set of stairs led to a door where another pirate burst from. Their blaster fire rained down on us from the elevated space. I rolled behind a crate to find Lilea and Maddy doing the same. The docking doors closed. Alarms blared, and the engines roared.
Gripping the crate strap, I steadied myself prior to liftoff. The engines groaned. The engineer hadn’t finished their repairs. Considering how quickly we took off, the pilot didn’t run their checks. We were as likely to be blown to bits as we were to killeach other.
“I’m going straight to the cockpit before this fucker kills us all. Cover me,” I said over our comms.
“Got it,” Lilea and Maddy said.
